The marks of human presence include weathered towns, gaunt hamlets, small arenas emblazoned with the names of local boys who made it to the National Hockey League, unbounded grain fields, and, in the town of

Eastend, a few blocks of houses and a small river that became the source of a great book by Wallace Stegner, a graceful and underappreciated writer who spent the formative years of his boyhood in this region.

This is not a place to take lightly. It rewards close attention.

Val Marie is located a little over an hour's drive south of Swift Current. It's a weathered town hanging onto the landscape by sheer determination.

The town consists of a few blocks of houses set in a vast stretch of arid landscape running roughly between Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta and the Gravelbourg-Wood Mountain area in southern Saskatchewan.

It was originally a French and Catholic settlement, and local farm centre. A few farm services, a hotel with a beer parlour and a small café with uncertain hours remain. Now it's better known as a stopping point at the western boundary of Grasslands National Park.

An older cultural legacy lies a little farther to the west. In Eastend, near a bend in the Frenchman River, is a street with a 90-year-old house, still solid and still inhabited, that was home for a few years to a young Wallace Stegner.

Stegner returned here in about 1950 to do research for a book on forms of local democracy. He was carried away into his past by the scent of a plentiful riverside bush called the wolf willow.

He created Wolf Willow, a combination of memoir, local history and fiction. The book captured a moment of time in a nearly empty place where optimists and eccentrics hoped they could bring civilization to the last bit of the central North American plains remaining open for settlement. Most of them found out why this was the last place to be settled. Even today, tourist literature describes Eastend as being "in the middle of nowhere."

With its homey, welcoming atmosphere, the town has become a small cultural centre where writers have settled and brought fresh life. If you stay for a day's exploring, there's a potter's workshop, a large bookstore, a good local museum and a nearby astronomical observatory established many years ago by a talented amateur who built much of his own equipment.

It's an easy drive through mostly empty landscape to Val Marie and the west block of Grasslands National Park.

The most convenient place to stay is the Convent Inn. It's located in a former Roman Catholic convent and school, turned into a country inn and restaurant by Robert and Mette Ducan. Mette cooks the fine meals. Robert will tell you how to find sites not on tourist maps.

The prize at the end of this journey is the land itself. You can drive into Grasslands Park, but the greatest rewards of the visit go to those who hike across the tough grass and dry, lumpy dirt of some of Canada's last native mixed grass prairie. There's plenty of prickly pear cactus, too.

The country's only prairie dog colonies are easy to find. The rodents obligingly stand sentry outside their holes. They aren't spooked by observers who keep their distance.

Deer are around if you keep your eyes open. Recently re-established bison may take some searching. They sometimes wander into corners of the park.

Unusual birds like Baird's sparrows and lark buntings are plentiful. The endangered sage grouse is best viewed with help from parks staff.

A $5, half-day guided tour led by a park ranger is a great way to learn how to spot smaller features like fragile flowers, funnel-shaped spiderwebs in the grass, reflective chunks of gypsum on a hillside, and teepee rings (circles of stones that held down the sides of teepees for Sioux, Assiniboine and other First Nations that camped here as little as 140 years ago).

After an introduction, the park is best explored on foot, with map, hats, plenty of water, a good sense of direction and a willingness to keep an eye out for details. We passed lichen-encrusted rocks, found other teepee rings, ran across one of the park's short-horned lizards, and made a passing acquaintance with a rattlesnake that obligingly let us know - loud and clear - that it was sunning itself a couple of metres off our hiking path.

The rattle isn't so much the dry, maraca sound of movies. It sounded more like a hissing buzz, but one that was louder and more penetrating than the surrounding background clacking of grasshoppers. The rattle seems to speak to a primal area of your brain. It stops you in your tracks, which is good for all concerned, and gives you time to spot a dusty brown, fat coil a little way off in the grass.

The park as a whole speaks to a more primal self, in the stripped-down language of natural elements. Standing on top of a butte, hawks circling nearby, teepee rings bearing witness to an ephemeral moment in human history, you can look out over a glacial valley two or three kilometres wide and stretching along the course of the Frenchman River for 15 or 20 kilometres with no sign of other people and nothing but the wind to keep you company.

IF YOU GO:

Tips: Eastend and Val Marie both have good municipal campgrounds.

Don't stick your hands where you can't see. Abandoned prairie dog holes are favourite shelter not only for snakes, but also for the equally poisonous black widow spiders native to the region.

Do take a hat and a strong mosquito repellent. West Nile virus is present in the region. Binoculars will help for long-distance viewing and birdwatching.

Reading list: Wolf Willow, by Wallace Stegner; Wood Mountain Poems, by Andrew Suknaski (especially relevant for those going on to the park's east block); Parks Canada websites with a more complete guide to flora and fauna.

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